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It was a new world order after all.
“The annual office party,” Bond said, staring at the piece of paper.
“Mm. And it’s a memo,” Moneypenny said, smiling like a crocodile. “Not an optional invite.”
“It’s terrible what absolute administrative power can do to a person,” he said, but he smirked at her and put it into his pocket as he left.
-
There was all the new paperwork, for one: “Signature here in triplicate, initials where the red stubs are, and then the requisition chit when you’re done,” Q said, dangling the little acorn-shaped thing in front of him – which, to be fair, did turn out to be worth it two days later when it took out all the handheld electronic devices in Prague for an entire fifteen minutes.
All the hire cars in Helsinki got blown up – five of them, one after the other. “Made for a big procurement order,” Tanner said apologetically, giving him a pen and a file bristling with little sign here! stickers.
“Did you know you can track it yourself?” Moneypenny asked, when he came in to ask for his portfolio just before leaving for Abu Dhabi.
He leaned on the corner of her desk and stared blandly at her until she made a noise and hit a few keys. “It’ll be on your desk in an hour,” she said sweetly, reaching for her in-tray and he had enough presence of mind to be out the door before she could lay her hands on whatever she was looking for.
He ran into Q on the way out, who was holding what looked like a small avalanche of paper. “You know, there’s hiding in the shadows like a real spy and then there’s just plain bad manners,” Bond said.
“Oh for goodness’ sakes stop moaning,” Q said, but he gave Bond what looked like a razor to wave over it all instead of signing, and grabbed everything back mumbling something about Acme security protocols, so Bond did.
-
There were the placid, pleasant meetings, for another: “Good job in Montreal,” M said. “The CIA liaison was impressed you held back on the weapons systems issue.”
“I didn’t have the right authorisation for it,” Bond said calmly, because the sting had gone out of it after the second or third day.
“The true mark of a good field agent is what they do when they’re unauthorised to do it.” M smiled, rueful. “I daresay you proved yourself on that account long before my time though, 007. The department regrets the error.”
“There’s every possibility I’ll feel the need to re-examine the boundaries again, sir,” Bond said. He was trying to be loyal, though he was quite sure she had never regretted anything; it had taken imminent death for her to admit to failing with Silva and even then she’d managed to sound grudging about it.
“You never know where the weak spots are unless you test them? And they say spying isn’t an iterative process.” M had his hand on the table; his strong, thin fingers were gently drumming on its surface.
“Whoever said that didn’t come from field agent stock,” Bond said. “It’s not all fast cars and power suits. Between filing the paperwork and killing targets it’s almost getting predictable around here.”
“Oh it’s mostly fast cars and power suits,” M said dryly. “I’ve signed the expense forms.”
“Sir,” Bond said, smiling in spite of himself, and stood up to go.
M nodded and Bond was almost out the door when he said, “I hoped we’d see you at the office party, 007. The department wants a more visible face put on everything. Moneypenny tells me we haven’t seen your confirmation yet.”
Apparently that tone of voice didn’t change between employers. “An oversight, M,” Bond said. “I do have rather a lot of emails to catch up on.”
-
And then there was the question of M. He hadn’t known it was a question, but –
– “You’re security attaché for the Geneva meeting,” Moneypenny said.
He looked at the dossier she was holding out. “The man hasn’t been here ten minutes. They could give him a chance to make some enemies,” but he took the dossier and went to Geneva.
There was a team there already: they’d marked all the exits, checked on staff schedules, done a clean sweep. It was all protocol, but they’d been efficient and careful. He couldn’t add to it, and then M sent a message saying he was in an all day meeting and would meet Bond before dinner.
M, who was alone, refusing much more than the hotel’s in-house security detail even though the dossier had been quite clear about Bond’s duties.
It was unpleasant to have the entire day to think about that, and by the end of it he’d lost some of his natural caution. M sat down across from him with two fingers of scotch in his glass, looking tired and wary at the same time.
“Questions, 007?” he said.
Bond said, “I’d like to know if it’s my workload or my loyalty that’s being examined, sir.”
“No-one doubts your loyalty to the company, Bond,” M said. He had taken off his tie and there was a little pale vee of his skin showing where he’d undone the top button of his shirt.
Bond nodded. Insecurity wasn’t an attractive thing but she would be a hard act to follow – he wasn’t sure how secure he’d feel himself, if it were him – and everything had a price. Even, it seemed, the privilege of guarding someone from themselves.
“Someone once called me and my kind blunt instruments,” he said. “Point us in the right direction and we get the job done, or die trying.”
“I knew men like that, once,” M said quietly.
Bond felt a moment’s regret – the man had paid his dues. The report on his stay in Ireland had been succinct but clear; the accompanying photographs had been almost unrecognisable. There was one of him under a blanket, one hand trying to hold onto the edge of it. M hadn’t had any fingernails in the picture.
“Then you know we listen to the voice in our ear, sir,” he said.
“A poor sort of declaration as far as declarations go, 007, but it’ll have to do for now,” M said. “At least until something better comes along.”
“As far as that goes, M,” Bond said, “will you actually be needing my services while I’m here?” He only half meant it the way it came out: hard and husky; tests could go both ways and he was still feeling the after-effects of the flare of irritation, but she’d died and left him with obligations, damn her. He had a debt to repay now, and he meant to honour it.
M looked wry. “Perhaps you’re here just so I can relive the glory days. Remind myself of something.” He drained his drink and stood up.
Bond did, too. “I’ll put on as good a show as I can, then.”
“Hold back a little,” M said, but he was smiling. “Lest I suffer from the comparison.”
Yes, the insecurity wasn’t unappealing. At least he was taking it all with good grace; it wasn’t exactly inviting, a leader who doubted himself enough to let it show, but it wasn’t the worst thing Bond had ever had to face.
-
He almost did end up treating the memo as an invitation to turn down, but when the night eventually came he found himself at a corner of the bar, drinking steadily and watching the others mingle. There were two other 00’s in the room; they looked the way he did, when he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the bar: a little too quick with their conversations, careless of the way they looked, their hands loose and relaxed. They exchanged nods. None of them approached the other.
“Mr Bond,” a woman with a silver scarf said, smiling. He nodded, baffled. “Janet,” she said, “..from HR?”
There were more, after that: Hugh, who said he knew all his medical statistics — “Senior Medical Officer,” he said hastily, like he thought Bond might take offence. Valerie, Tanner’s assistant, who asked him about Saudi Arabia. Leonard, External Administration Manager – “I’m the field agents’ housekeeper,” he said, and laughed at the look on Bond’s face: “you think that milk in your fridge stays fresh forever? Clothes don’t dryclean themselves, you know.”
“I – yes,” Bond said. “Thanks.”
“Never took you for a moody drunk. Did you want to go home and curl up with a good book?” Moneypenny was flushed and warm, and her eyes were inviting. She held up four fingers at the bartender. “Thought you’d be the life and soul of the party.”
“If I weren’t drunk,” he said, “I would be.” She laughed and grabbed the four glasses the bartender set down. “Come on,” she said.
The room was abuzz with the sound of strangers being familiar with each other. It scratched up against his nerves, made him restless.
He ran a finger down her arm. “Later.”
She laughed again and was gone.
He went looking around and room and found nothing; he ended up wandering upstairs to the roof -- they’d booked out the top two floors of the hotel for the party. It looked deserted but he could smell cigarette smoke, and he followed it to where it was coming from: under the eaves of a chimney stack, in shadow.
M was leaning against the brick wall behind him. He smiled crookedly at Bond. “I suppose you have total impunity, being a field agent,” he said, tipping his cigarette at Bond.
“Health and Safety doesn’t seem to have flushed us out yet,” Bond agreed, but shook his head at the proffered box. “Looks like they’ve managed to get you, though I can’t deny the ambience of the place.” His nod took in the drip of a leaky gutter to their left and the green smell of a patch of moss at their feet.
M chuckled, warm and unrepentant. “I promised her I wouldn’t,” he said. The glow of the cigarette showed up the neat curve of his mouth.
“Your wife?”
The night was warm, for September; M had taken his jacket off and rolled his sleeves up. The thin, crisp edges of his shirt curled around his forearms.
“Divorced.” He blew out a thin curl of smoke. “No, Eve. I’ve a healthy respect for my private secretaries and their demands.”
“You let them make demands?”
“Why not? It’s all based on reciprocity, after all – I do make a few myself.” He took another drag, rubbed his lips with his thumb.
Bond watched the movement; it caught his eye, like a cat seeing a flicker in the corner of its vision. Mallory, he realised, was drunk. “This wish fulfilment economy of yours,” he said, “I wonder where it ends.”
“I wasn’t aware I’d made any demands of you, 007,” Mallory said. “Though I suppose I’ll have start to sooner or later. Goes with the title, I’m told.”
“With respect, sir,” he said, “I believe I signed my soul away three folders ago. You’ve more than crossed that line.”
“Your turn, then,” Mallory said, stepping forward.
It was a bold move – unexpected – though Mallory was moving so slowly it looked like he’d pull back any second. Bond caught him by the arms – it was a reflex he’d never been able to train himself out of, but he let Mallory’s mouth close over his. It was warm and dry; Mallory smelt like smoke and his hands were strong on Bond’s waist.
“All the work of an assignment,” Mallory said against his mouth, “and none of the glamour. This is a comedown in the world for you, Bond.”
“Work?” he said, rubbing his thumbs along Mallory’s collarbone, smoothing the fabric of his shirt down. “This isn’t work.”
“Because I’m making it easy?” Mallory’s voice was light but his shoulders were bowed tight under Bond’s hands, like he was bracing himself for something. “My god, that’s hardly a surprise.”
He’d have backed away then but for the tension singing through Mallory’s body, telling Bond what the confession was costing him. It was true that he’d felt the intent coming off Mallory but the layers of stilted casualness could have hidden it easily enough. To have it so exposed, so raw and ready, to see Mallory’s face starting to screw into a grimace of denial…
… It took only took the briefest moment to decide: being downstairs had been a weight around his neck, and Mallory’s body was hard against him, pushing a little. He kissed Mallory back, taking the moment for what it was; their feet shuffled together and there was a smell of crushed moss about them.
Mallory’s body eased. “Downstairs,” he said in Bond’s ear, and pulled a hotel key out of his pocket.
Bond raised an eyebrow at him. Mallory chuckled. “Give me a little credit. I knew I’d have far too much to drink.” He stopped when he saw the look on Bond’s face. “Not quite as much as that, James.”
“You’ve seen my file,” Bond said, rubbing his hips against Mallory’s in a long, slow undulation. “Why would you think that would matter?”
“That,” Mallory said, his head falling back, “is exactly why it would matter.”
Mallory’s head was in shadow but the pale line of his throat was visible in the half-light. Bond bit down on it, not gently; Mallory breathed hard. He was wide open, soft around the eyes, too kind, too – Bond growled low in his throat, unzipped Mallory’s trousers and shoved his hand down into them. He used his other hand to unzip his own.
“I—“ Mallory pushed a little at his shoulder. “Show me.”
“Christ,“ Bond said, suddenly wishing he’d fought it a little more. This was a weakness; he’d done what was required of him, fallen into place. Mallory looked up then and saw Bond’s face; his own changed, then he surged up against Bond and pushed him against the chimney. Bond went with it, letting their momentum shove him up against the bricks, and yes, Mallory was strong, Mallory had it in him to push back, Mallory was–
“Show me,” Mallory said calmly, and tipped Bond’s jaw back, held it there while he fucked into Bond’s hand, his other hand very still against Bond’s throat.
Bond stroked them together; it was good enough – Mallory was hard and thick and their cocks fit well together. It wasn’t long before he felt his orgasm gathering.
“Yeah,” Bond said, relieved, and came, watching Gareth Mallory as he came too, eyes half-lidded and mouth crooked against the pulse of it.
-
The party was in full swing when he passed by it on his way out.
Moneypenny was on the dance floor, being twirled by a man in a charcoal grey suit. Q was talking to a woman who looked familiar, and Tanner was having a conversation with a group of men who all looked exactly like him.
There were three exits out of the room, and one of them led straight onto the stairs; the other two were easy access, wide doorways. He made a circuit around them, checking the guards stationed were armed and alert. They were.
He went home.
-
The bomb in Skardu was in the right place, but the intel about the timing was bad; it went off almost before he could get clear. By the time he got to a hospital he’d been two days in hiding without medical kit; the wound was infected and his left arm was broken in three places.
They did what they could in Peshawar, and he was about to head back out to the highlands when the voice in his ear stopped him. He was being recalled, it said: handover to 008 at 1330 hours, pack up, go home.
He went straight to the offices from Heathrow.
“He’s not –“ Moneypenny sprang up out of her chair. She looked alarmed, but not surprised to see him.
“He’ll see me,” Bond said grimly. He’d put up with everything from receipt-gathering to being introduced to the man who bought his milk; bringing him in was just a step too far.
Mallory was on the phone when he pushed the door open. Years of training made Bond halt, wait for him to put the receiver down. Anything less would feel like a kind of betrayal – she’d raised him better, he thought, and felt his mouth twist.
“We had no other option,” Mallory said, as he hung up. He’d kept his eyes on Bond throughout, eyes flicking to the cast. “They made you as soon as the liaison took you to the hospital.”
“I could have found a way,” Bond said. “There were other options. There are always other options.”
“Not ones I was aware of,” Mallory said. “I made a call.”
It had to be deliberate, but Bond didn’t flinch. “It was the wrong one.”
Mallory had circles under his eyes and there were lines around his mouth that hadn’t been there before. “I thought you listened to the voice in your ear, Bond.”
He had, for all the good that had ever done him. “I’m here,” Bond said, evenly. “Sir.”
“You’re not here because he brought you in,” Moneypenny said from behind him.
Bond turned to look at her. She closed the door behind her and came to stand next to him, shoulder to shoulder, for all the world like they were in some sort of agreement.
“We can’t afford to do without him.” It almost sounded like the tail-end of an argument, the way she was saying it to Mallory. “Please, M.”
“Christ.” Mallory rubbed at his forehead with a hand. “Eve, I trust you implicitly—“
“I’m not enough,” she said, sharply.
She looked at Bond. “Targeted threat, aimed at M, they’ve been tracking his movements for the last month. We intercepted a package, but it got as far as his door. Three days ago we found a bug in his office – it’s not good enough. I can’t be everywhere, and we have to be careful about who we trust.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “I need backup.”
Mallory looked torn between embarrassment and something unidentifiable; he had a very slight flush around his neck.
“You might have mentioned it,” Bond said to him.
“Your arm’s broken in three places,” Mallory said stiffly, “You’re a liability. I’d have been well within my remit to have you recalled anyway.” He was looking resigned, though – Moneypenny saw it and nudged Bond again.
“Personal detail, then,” Bond said, both to her and Mallory, shaking himself out of it. “For how long?”
“Q’s tracking a lead that turned up yesterday. He says a week. Something about SQLs and ports.” Moneypenny looked triumphant. “Come outside and I’ll give you the week’s schedule.”
Bond hung back when she left the room. “You should have mentioned it,” he said again, very quietly.
Mallory looked up at him, and Bond couldn’t read that look on his face, not to save himself.
“You’ve problems enough of your own, James,” he said. The look subsided; he leaned back into his chair. “Go see Eve. I hear there’s a file in it for you somewhere.”
-
The schedule looked measured, though every minute of it was accounted for: meetings all morning till lunch, a short break, then the afternoons spent in appointments at M’s office. One early evening meeting a week with the PM, more appointments – Bond raised an eyebrow at Moneypenny, “does he go home?”
She sighed. “Less often than he should.”
Moneypenny and he were at the core of the team, one of them with Mallory at all times while he was working; the larger team was about ten strong.
“Ten,” Mallory said, incredulous. “There’s no justification—“
The justification was that he knew exactly the way Mallory moved: quiet, thoughtful, but with an eye to his people’s safety and almost none to his own. It was a soldier’s training, the way a man might move if he only thought about his worth relative to everyone else’s; it singled him out, put a target on his back.
“Ten’s adequate,” Bond said, and maybe some inflection in his voice gave away how ultimately useless it had all been for her, how Silva had glided past everyone in his way, brushing past every block.
Mallory looked rebellious, but said nothing.
-
They compromised on six in the end, with a promise: “a handgun on me at all times,” Mallory said. They were in the car together, headed to Whitehall for the first meeting of the day. Moneypenny was in the car behind them. Bond had scowled at the cavalcade when they got to it, seeing the diminished numbers immediately. He was in a foul mood when he got into the car, but Mallory put a gloved hand up before he could speak.
“The phrase ‘austerity measures’ may mean nothing to you,” Mallory said, “but at the very least you’d admit Eve’s the equal of any two agents.”
“That still only makes eight,” Bond said, but Mallory pulled the Sig out, cocking an eyebrow at him. Bond nodded reluctantly, as much an acknowledgement of what the man could do with it as how Mallory’s hand was now on his arm, gripping him.
“We’re squared at ten if we keep you and Eve on par.” He looked apologetic. “This is all going to be terrifically boring for you, James.”
Mallory’s hand was warm through all the layers, holding him in place.
“Take the glove off,” Bond said, roughly.
-
In the end, it was a question of whether he’d armed Mallory against the right kind of enemy: the meetings weren’t meetings as much as a war of attrition against whatever line he was holding.
“These aren’t deliverables,” Lord Cavendish-Stuart said, shaking a report at Mallory after three hours of debate. “The future of the country’s international security can’t rest on a list of Section Six’s goals. We’re not a careers counselling service, Gareth.”
“No? We do all want to grow up and become real boys,” Mallory said. “You wanted accountability, Hugh.”
Baroness Hartwell frowned at him. “This is not accountability, Mr Mallory. It’s almost exactly the opposite.”
“It’s a company, ma’am,” Mallory said. “Bring us back in halfway through the year for review and if we haven’t delivered on the embedded initiatives, we can discuss amelioration. We both know it’s more than Section 5’s giving you.”
“Amelioration? Budgetary?” The Baroness leaned forward.
Mallory spread his hands out, palms up. “Whatever the Committee feels is appropriate.”
He walked out looking pleased. Eve quirked an eyebrow at him. “Did you just sign away Bond’s expense account?”
Mallory laughed. It was a low, quiet sound but it rolled round the hall they were passing through and was amplified by the tiled floors into something rich and unreserved. “Let’s hope not,” he said.
“You can’t run a company on cheap drinks,” Bond said. “What do you know about six months from now?”
They got into a lift, taking them three flights down and onto the afternoon’s meetings.
“I signed off on MI5’s budget before I left JIC,” Mallory said. “The honourable members are going to have rather a lot on their plates this summer. I don’t believe Section 6 will figure very largely in the hurried times to come.”
Bond frowned, working it out. “You hobbled MI5 in advance?”
The lift doors opened. Mallory looked at him, amusement still lighting his eyes. “I made some tactical choices,” he said, holding the doors open for them. “All to keep our agents in vermouth. We should all come out of it well, if Section 5 plays its cards right.”
-
It went on like that for the next two days: Mallory gave ground, made it up again, took advice from men who stopped him in hallways. People stepped out from the shadows to draw him aside and murmur into his ear; Bond watched for a day and worked out who he could let through. The others he used his body against, angling his shoulder down, letting his back move between Mallory and the world, using his cast if he had to.
Moneypenny just used her thousand-mile stare; he actually saw one junior whip run from it.
“Lord Farnsworth wants open disclosure rights for his Committee,” Mallory said, his mouth twitching. “I’ve known for weeks. The question is: how did you?”
Bond didn’t look back. The man had gone red and hot in the face when Bond had gently pressed back as they’d passed, wedging him into a doorway.
“Generalised intelligence training,” Bond said, curling a finger around Mallory’s elbow to steer him towards the doors. It was in his eyelashes – they way they flickered down and away when the timing was off, or when the person was wrong. “Refined in the trenches. Only the very best spies would be able to read the signs.” His mouth drooped a little to the left when he was tired.
Mallory was hiding a smile when they came up against the queue out of the building and had to stop. The woman in front of them bent to pick something off the ground; Mallory leaned back and Bond let his hand spread across the other man’s back to steady him.
Just an official and his bodyguard, standing in line; Bond slid his hand up, the wool of Mallory’s suit a warm oil under his fingers.
-
“Your people seem to have misunderstood how a memorandum of understanding works, Harry,” Mallory said.
“We don’t have the same MoU with the CIA,” the chief of Defence Intelligence said. “Your man wasn’t cleared to have company, and your communication lines were faulty – my people saw a stranger with him and came to a decision. They have my full support over it, Gareth.”
Moneypenny threw Bond a look. Vice-Admiral Chatterworth’s hackles were visibly rising. Mallory didn’t bait people, and Chatterworth had been cordial enough when they’d been ushered into the room; there was no obvious historical animosity that he could see between the men.
“Next time someone screws up the paperwork take it to Q, all right?” Moneypenny murmured in his ear. He frowned at her, not understanding.
Mallory was smoothing a finger along the grain of the wooden table top, eyes on the other man. “It’s certainly an irony that bears noting down somewhere,” he said, “that it was on DI’s request the American was there in the first place. As I understand it, Rubenstein was invited by your technical specialists to help streamline the same database my agent was denied access to.”
He looked gently puzzled for a minute, and his finger stilled. “Or is that faulty intelligence as well?”
Bond’s mouth went dry. Rubenstein had tried explaining the same thing to the DI staff. They hadn’t wanted a bar of it; it had wasted half a week of careful negotiation with the Russians, and he’d only missed having a gun to his head by being careful about their schedules.
He must have made a sound, or a movement. Mallory’s eyes flickered to him for a minute; Bond saw they’d gone cold and very grey, the colour of old steel underneath rust.
Chatterworth cleared his throat. “That part,” he said, “isn’t, no.”
Mallory looked at him expectantly. A muscle twitched in Chatterworth’s jaw. “The department regrets the error,” he said.
“Q branch will be in touch,” Mallory said, rising. “They’ll be expecting full database access.”
-
“He’s not the forgiving kind,” Moneypenny said casually, when they were back in the car. “You sure about this?”
“Jones said they stalled on his access last month,” Mallory said. “One incident is an error, two’s—“
“— a challenge,” Bond said.
Mallory was looking out the window, at the rain hitting the glass. “A test,” he said. He turned to them and smiled tiredly.
Bond said, “he knew it was me.” Moneypenny went tense beside him, but Bond could only look at the other man.
The low grey light coming in made Mallory’s eyes gleam. “I should hope so,” he said.
Bond grinned back at him. “Good.”
-
Tanner wanted Moneypenny when they returned. Bond followed Mallory into his office.
“You were owed that apology.” Mallory was almost vibrating with anger, but he shook Bond’s hand off irritably. “I’m all right.”
“You’re not,” Bond said and poured him a drink, pushed him down onto the sofa. “So none of this is everyday business. It’s all about bloody prodding you to see how much you’ll take, like you’re cattle. How long has it been going on?”
Mallory waved a hand in the air. “It’s nothing unexpected.” He drained his drink and set it down. “It could be a lot worse, believe me. My one saving grace is that they probably don’t have anyone left waiting in the wings – not for this job, not yet anyway. They won’t push too hard.”
“I read something over Q’s shoulder once,” Bond said, sitting next to him. “You play golf with Chatterworth. You attended Harrow with Edward Stuart-Cavendish. No other Section 6 head has ever had a standing dinner engagement at 10 Downing Street. Why should they push at all?”
Mallory looked at him, incredulous. “You can’t be serious.”
“Just tell me,” Bond said.
Mallory put his hand on Bond’s thigh. It was warm and solid and he was close enough to smell: the cotton of his shirt, the cut of his aftershave, something soft on his skin.
“I took over from her, James,” Mallory said quietly. “They were always going to come after me. She was always going to be the bar I was measured against.” His hand tightened. “Perhaps she always will be.”
There was a knock at the door.
Mallory sighed and stood up. “Come in, Eve. I’ve got that submission for Tanner.”
The door swung open and the shadow on the carpet was all wrong – too tall for Tanner, too broad across the shoulders for Moneypenny, something in its hand.
Bond was moving before he knew it. When he looked up, the gun was pointing at him.
-
“Tanner’s indisposed,” the man said pleasantly. The face was familiar, he’d seen it across a crowded room … “the party,” Bond said. The man was one of the other 00’s he’d seen. They’d nodded to each other.
“Carmichael,” Mallory said. He was perfectly still, not drawing the man’s attention. Good, that was good. Carmichael was left-handed. If Bond could distract him with sudden movement—
“Please don’t, 007.” Carmichael still sounded pleasant. “It would be a waste of both our time. M, if you’ll come with me.”
There was movement in a corner of the doorway. Bond kept his eyes on Carmichael. “What do you want?” he said, “you’re going to shoot me. You may as well let me have the details.” Moneypenny was dragging herself slowly towards Carmichael, leaving a broad ribbon of blood behind her. She was holding something in her hand.
“We’re spies, Bond,” Carmichael said. “Opportunity lies around every corner. Do you know how many offers I’ve had to get rid of the man since he took over? How vulnerable it would leave us if we lost another section head? You’re quite right, by the way, I am going to shoot you.”
He raised the gun slightly. Moneypenny’s arm came down in a slow arc towards his calf; she was only just going to reach him but a scrape might still throw him off. Now, Bond thought, but he was suddenly off balance, shoved aside, and time turned soft and liquid as Mallory stood where he had been, bracing himself for impact.
Moneypenny stabbed down. The gun went off, but Carmichael screamed and stumbled; apparently she’d been closer than Bond had thought. Mallory jerked and fell, but the threat was still live; Carmichael was righting himself.
Bond launched himself at him, off-balance because of his cast. He got his foot around Carmichael’s calf and kicked the letter opener in deeper. Carmichael screamed again and buckled, but still got a fist into his face. Pain bloomed like blood in water – probably his nose; Bond kicked Carmichael in the groin, caught him on the way down and broke his wrists. The gun fell out of Carmichael’s hand.
Moneypenny had propped herself against the doorway. Her face was very pale, but she stretched her hand out for the gun, so whatever he’d done to her hadn’t gone all that deep.
“Tanner’s breathing. I’m okay,” she said, aiming it at Carmichael. “I pushed the panic button. Quick, quick.”
Mallory was face down on the carpet, but he was breathing.
“I’m going to turn him over. If there’s bleeding I have to staunch it,” Bond said out loud, more to make the words move his hand than anything else.
He did; it was clumsy with one hand but Mallory rolled over easily, with none of the resistance a dead weight gave off. He was gasping, his eyes closed.
Bond touched Mallory, feeling past the shift of his clothes; his fingers hit a hard lump in Mallory’s chest, lodged into a rigid barrier – “christ,” he said, and felt his body sag, relief making it almost too hard to breathe.
Mallory was trying to sit up, rubbing at his chest, still choking.
“I’ve got you. Can you move? Shuffle over here. Easy, easy,” Bond said, trying to be gentle, keeping a hand on his back to prop him up. They moved until Mallory’s back was against an armchair; Bond tore his shirt off him as soon as he could and undid the vest. The bullet had veered right, hit Mallory under the pectoral. There was a huge red patch, rapidly swelling. “Eve’s idea?”
He looked over at her. She smiled at him. “You should have heard all the complaints.”
“Still itches,” Mallory said, wheezing. The hallway rang with shouts and the thud of running feet. “Terrible thing.” Bond kept his hand on Mallory’s bare nape, rubbing warm, firm circles into it, even after the outer door had crashed open.
-
Moneypenny needed stitches where Carmichael had hit her across the head; she was more angry than hurt. “He was never like you,” she said, shifting on the hospital bed. They’d kept her in to check for concussion. “Never any edge to him. Just quiet and efficient, got the job done. You’d never have known.”
“He made the threats look amateurish enough that we wouldn’t focus too hard internally.” Bond held up his phone. “Q called. The tech trail ended somewhere in Poland – business, not government.”
“God.” She thumped the bed. “Someone puts a contract out, just like that, and our people turn for the money.”
He walked to the window. It was raining again, sheets of it making a curtain between the window and the street below. “A new world order,” he said, looking at her reflection in the glass. “We’re all going to be tested in it, one way or the other.”
She was quiet for a minute. “I suppose we are,” she said, finally. When he turned around, she was smiling at him. “Changed your mind about lots of things, have you?”
“It’s not just my mind that needs changing,” he said, and gave her a gentle nudge as he left.
-
He drove Mallory back to his flat. Tanner had wanted to send guards, but Mallory had taken the phone from Bond and spoken to him, and they’d been left to drive home alone.
It was dark when they got in. He drew the curtains, switched the lights on, helped Mallory into bed.
“James,” Mallory said.
“Let me do this,” Bond said – almost there, but not quite, not quite. Mallory’s eyes were warm and heavy, and his mouth drooped with fatigue. He nodded, and let Bond undress him, clean his neck and chest with a warm cloth. The hospital had taped his ribs. Bond gave him his medication, and pulled the covers around him, ignoring the low rumble Mallory made.
“Rest,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He went into the bathroom, ran the shower and leaned over the sink, watching his reflection in the mirror.
-
They woke up together in a heavy tangle of limbs. Mallory was against his side, his face in Bond’s neck. Bond waited until he was all the way awake, then pressed his meds on him.
“That’s enough,” Mallory said sharply, when Bond made to move away. “You couldn’t have stopped it, you couldn’t have known, and I was the only one in the room wearing a vest.”
“I was on personal detail.” Rage clouded in him, delayed but no less sharp for it. He would have thrown Mallory off ordinarily, but the bruise had blossomed far past the edges of the tape and Mallory’s chest looked raw and tender. “You stopped me doing my fucking job. You threw yourself into the fucking line of fire.”
“So did she,” Mallory said. “Again and again. So will I, again and again. We know the risks; we take the bloody job in spite of them.” He put a hand on Bond’s chest and pushed down hard; Bond let himself go down. Mallory leaned over him. “Be done with it, for god’s sake, James. It was the right thing to do.”
The memory came unbidden: Mallory saying, perhaps she always will be – maybe that had to be the way of it; Bond had to concede it. But that Mallory should be found wanting, that they would measure him out to be less than he was – christ, Mallory was a warrior.
“You’re a bloody idiot,” he said, and Mallory leaned down a little more and kissed him. Their mouths were restless against each other, stopping and starting when their bodies brushed up the wrong way, flickers of pain making it awkward.
“Lie down,” Bond said, pushing him, “Gareth.”
Mallory laughed and lay back; Bond slid down, keeping his cast tucked under him, and took Mallory’s cock into his mouth. He pressed a thumb into the hollow of Mallory’s hips, rubbing the thick cord of muscle there in time with his mouth. Mallory’s cock was hard and smooth, giving under his tongue only because he was so hungry for it.
“James,” Mallory said, putting his fingers into Bond’s hair.
“Yeah,” Bond said, low and harsh, “yeah, I want you to.” Mallory was looking at him, head tilted down, and he fucked Bond’s mouth like that: slow, grave, a little sweet, turning Bond’s face a little every so often, closing his eyes at what he saw. Bond’s mouth felt stretched and tight and when Mallory’s body clenched and he came in hot spurts, Bond drank it down, grunting, licked all around, chased the last drop until Mallory stopped shuddering.
“Come here.” Mallory shifted down a little. “Up, up.” Bond went, straddling Mallory all the way, dragging his cock along Mallory’s body as he went, watching as Mallory’s eyes went glassy at the long, damp slide of it.
“Christ,” Mallory said, and took Bond into his mouth as soon as he got close enough, hot lips swallowing him down. Bond leaned over, braced a hand against the headboard, and rode it out, sweat breaking out along his back, the bridge of his nose; the effort of balancing his body with just one hand, toes arched under to let him slide up and down, worth it just to see the flat of Mallory’s tongue licking him from root to tip, Mallory making hoarse little sounds just from that, from doing that.
Bond came, raw, his breath caught in his throat.
-
“It’s meant to be calibrated to your aural signature,” the boy said. He jiggled his leg under the table, cracked his knuckles. “Can I – that is, if you. I.” Bond unclipped the little button from his ear and tossed it over the table. The boy shrieked but caught it in time.
Mallory gave Bond a reproving look from his desk.
“V,” Bond said, settling back in his chair. “I’m a man with very simple needs.”
“He said you’d say that,” V muttered, plugging the button into his laptop.
“Given that, if Q could just find me a receiver...”
Scrawny fingers tapped madly on the keyboard. “He said you’d say that too.” V looked guilty. “I might have, um, brought. Um. The wrong one.”
Bond sighed and got up, ushering the boy out. “Call me back when you’re ready.”
“I’ll send the specs through. Maybe we could test run the beta model first? Together?” V looked hopelessly at him.
“Call me,” Bond said, closing the door, “when you’re ready.”
“Don’t ask me,” Mallory said, as Bond leaned on the desk beside him. “Where Q branch leads, the rest of us follow.”
“V?” Bond said. “Really?”
Mallory chuckled. Bond looked at him, considering. “You’re moving better,” he said.
“You’re trying to get out of sending the file request through for your Chinese briefing papers,” Mallory said, amused.
Bond tapped the box he’d put down on the desk when he’d come in. “I can’t get out of it if I’m never in it, M.”
“Haven’t you heard? There’s a new chap running the place. No quarter given.” M pulled the lid off. “The British government won’t be bribed, Mr Bond.” When he looked up from the box his mouth was soft. “Why? She gave it to you.”
Bond pulled the little bulldog out of the box and put it onto the desk. “The old world and the new,” he said. Mallory put a hand against his chest, and the warmth of it eased away the small clench he’d felt, just for a moment.
“And besides, I need you to save me from V.” Bond ran his thumb along Mallory’s jaw, coaxing his mouth open. “Put Q back onto my profile. The little bugger’s wily.”
Mallory smiled and Bond ran his thumb over that, too. “I’d rather stand in front of another bullet. Q asked to be reassigned. Something about wanting all his team members to run through the gauntlet.”
Bond groaned.
“I can’t save you from everything, 007.” Mallory gave him a shove. “Go and do some paperwork, there’s a good fellow.”
“I’m moving better, too, you know,” Bond said, growling, and bit him on the lip before he went.
-
The end.